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dc.contributor.authorAhmed, Siraj
dc.date.accessioned2023-10-11T08:26:55Z
dc.date.available2023-10-11T08:26:55Z
dc.date.issued2018
dc.identifier.urihttps://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/76669
dc.description.abstractFor more than three decades, preeminent scholars in comparative literature and postcolonial studies have called for a return to philology as the indispensable basis of critical method in the humanities. Against such calls, this book argues that the privilege philology has always enjoyed within the modern humanities silently reinforces a colonial hierarchy. In fact, each of philology's foundational innovations originally served British rule in India. Tracing an unacknowledged history that extends from British Orientalist Sir William Jones to Palestinian American intellectual Edward Said and beyond, Archaeology of Babel excavates the epistemic transformation that was engendered on a global scale by the colonial reconstruction of native languages, literatures, and law. In the process, it reveals the extent to which even postcolonial studies and European philosophy—not to mention discourses as disparate as Islamic fundamentalism, Hindu nationalism, and global environmentalism—are the progeny of colonial rule. Going further, it unearths the alternate concepts of language and literature that were lost along the way and issues its own call for humanists to reckon with the politics of the philological practices to which they now return.en_US
dc.languageEnglishen_US
dc.subject.otherSir William Jones;comparative literature;World Literature;philology;colonial law;Islam;Hinduism;British India;critical method;historicismen_US
dc.titleArchaeology of Babelen_US
dc.title.alternativeThe Colonial Foundation of the Humanitiesen_US
dc.typebook
oapen.relation.isPublishedBy6b2b1871-a4f5-4d52-b611-31fc51dbcdceen_US
oapen.relation.isbn9780804785297en_US
oapen.relation.isbn9781503604025en_US
oapen.pages281en_US
oapen.place.publicationStanforden_US


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